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tv   [untitled]    August 31, 2012 2:37am-3:07am PDT

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>> so was that at all like a movie? >> was it a story? >> yeah. you can tell stories with dance. did you know that? if i was going to tell you about something else, this dance evolved in the courts where kings and queens enjoyed the dance. she will tell you a little about this right now. i will be back. >> all right. our next scene is going to move us from story telling that took
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place during the hindu temples and india into the mogel time in india this come from hindu and western cultures brought together. when the mogels came from persia to north india they saw the story telling and thought it was a beautiful art form. they were not engaged with the story but saw the beauty in the footwork and hand movement. they brought the dancers into their courts. they were a form of entertainment. so, i want you to put your imagination caps on. we will go from the forest into a beautiful mogel palace. there are velvet carpets and peacocks walking around. there are beautiful paintings and everyone all of you, the audience have come to enjoy the
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court and the king sits on his thrown in the corner twirling his mustache and he called for his dancers and they come to the room. you are here to be entertained by them. this is called taught. taught is a highly stylized tuning of the mind and body together. you will see very fast turns ending in sharp stances and things with our eyes and eye brows and our neck, our hands. and you will also hear a language, which you might have heard. this is the language of our dance. it tells us what to do with our feet and our bodies and there is a lot of mask going on. you will hear patterns and they will be repeated often 3 times this is a t high. i want you to try to listen for the patterns and see if you can figure out the number patterns.
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you will see a justure called salon. you remember the greeting namatse? >> good. salom is the muslim greeting. you take your right hand, say a salom. it's a muslim greeting and you will see the dancers say this and it means peace be with you and the king and to all of you this is taught.
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[applause] >> so, did anybody hear math? anybody hear any math? yes. >> i thought the 1, 2, 3, 4 pattern. >> good. >> that's counting in hindu. you know how to count to 4.
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see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. >> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. >> pause. >> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. >> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. pause. >> that's a rhythmic pattern that repeats itself 3 times about did you know we are doing multicasion and dividing up here? you didn't. so, this music we are dancing on is rhythmicly complicated the underline rhythmic does not go in a straight line. it goes if a cycle beginning on 1 and ending on 1. we are dancing on a 16 beat
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cycle. you can count to 16. why don't you keep the cycle and we will put a high on top of that. count with one and you can clap. 13, 14, 15, 16, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, >> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. >> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. >> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. >> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. >> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. did you know what you just did? >> you divided 16 into 3 equal parts. i bet you didn't think that was possible i know a physicist that didn't think it was possible. we are rocket scientists. half of you count 16, half do the t high. you can do it. first you try the 16.
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don't do the t high yet. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, you keep counting 16. you guys do this. you will start 5 times 3, 3 times. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. >> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, >> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, pause. >> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1. did we end on your 1? >> whoa, you divided 16 into 3
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equal parts. did you know you could do that? >> i'm dizzy. okay. well, we are going to end with a t high within a t high like a wheel that goes around and around and around. i want you to figure out there is a multiplecasion problem in here and i want you to see if you can tell us when we are done what it is. something will repeat 3 times.
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[applause] okay. which one of you figured it out? yes. >> 49, hum... >> i can see how you would say that, why do you say that? there is 49 of something. okay. did you notice the turns? the spins? how many were there in one piece? yes. no. yes. 9. how many times did we repeat that? how many times? 3. 9 times 3 -- is 27. we did 27 turns but we were going, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1.
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that's a sophisticated math concept, you were not wrong. i bet you will grow up to be a mathematician. i will give you my address you will have to send me your first paycheck because i taught you this. at this point we would like to thank you very much for coming. if you have any questions. i don't know if we want to open it you will for questions. may be just a few? okay. yes. what's your question? >> how do we get in this program? that is a good question. >> it's an interesting question because the answer with the 3 of us is the same. what i want to point out i look like i might be from india when i talk i sound like i'm from america. my parents are from india but i was born in america and i
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started this dance when i was 18. i was not a baby e. both charlotte and an drea did as well. charlotte at 15 years and joe airna and i 15 years. that's how we got in this program. we practiced very hard. very, very hard we practiced everyday and we have been been in india practicing 8 times where our teacher is from. yes. >> yes. >> well there are similarities all of southeast asia. we performed in bali with a
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group. it's a story from the [inaudible] and so the indian epiics actually the indian epiics for very common in cambodia and bali and thailand and there is a different aesthetic. all southeast asia and asia there are a lot of similarities. >> he is a male entity. he is not -- are you referring to the story? >> it's interesting you should say that. a unique indian concept is one
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of half male, half female. and that is -- unlike some dances the solo dancer portrays all of the parts in the story. you can portray a feminine aspect and then masculine aspect with the bow and arrow. the male has to portray feminine and the female has to portray masculine. there is a very fierce dance and a soft sort of dance and every dancer has to learn all those aspects. it's very, you know, my teacher i call him a guru in this art form you have to study very, very hard. you have to learn about all the cultural aspects.
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he says it's liberating because he enjoys and has to learn to bring up the feminine aspect. he's a strong character it's a challenge for him and he likes it. the stories are metaphor cal. i don't look at this that this is a man or woman. there are qualities we all have that some of us are in touch with and are not. in our culture we think people should not be people they have be macho and feminine image. every human being inside them has feminine and masculine qualities. one is not good or bad it's a duality you need to be a whole human being in touch of what is going on in society. if everyone danced or got in touch with different sides of
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them there would be more harmony in the world. yes. >> no, we have a school all over here. i'm talking so. . we have a school 250 students a school show coming up. she will tell you where you can take classes. >> in our class we teach kids from 5 years old to 55 years and older. our guru is 62 and he dances circles around all of us he's been dancing since he was 9. you can all learn and parents and grandfathers and grand mourths can learn, toochlt we have a special men's class and have classes in san francisco. if you have questions there is an address on the card and our e
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mail and you can -- or you can come talk to us if you have questions. we would like to say -- and you can say to us -- thank you so much for coming. [applause] is a commentator
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for national public radio's morning edition. he has written noert "new york times", the los angeles times and several magazines. his work has won the spirit of the west award as well as the colorado book award. the book, house of rain, is craig's latest book. please help me welcome craig childs. . >> hello. i come to you from out of the desert. i'm coming to you from a landscape where once you get an eye for things, 3 grains of sand out of place draw your attention, where everything is brought to bear, where everything is hinged to a story, every drop of rain
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leaving a dimple in the ground. stories are everywhere out in this landscape. when you walk down into the bottom of the narrow canyons made of sandstone and you put your hands on the sand stone faces and the smooth shallow scallops that look like champagne glasses, you can feel the shape of the last flood that came through. every place in the desert is a story. every place is a passage way. it's really hard to walk very far in the desert for me because there are so many stories that start opening up and lead you from place to place and place and soon you start picking up the patterns of wind, of rain. you pick up the patterns of people who were there before you because, out there, things seem to last forever. if you put a footprint down in
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certain places, that footprint will stay for 5 years, maybe even 10 years for somebody who's got a really good eye where you come walking along and you see the slightest depression in the ground and you kneel at it and you figure out that it was a person with about a size 9 foot walking across the desert 8 years before you. everything out there tells a story. that's why i'm here. because i'm looking for stories. i'm looking for these same kinds of stories that i find in the desert. i came to hear straight from grace cathedral today where i walked into the cathedral and i took off my shoes and walked on the maze that's right in the front, in the center. and i don't know if you've ever been to this place. you have to stop in and walk this maze because it is very much like what it's like to be
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out in the desert. where you start walking along and you see where you are going eventually. you see the center spot and you know where you are going to be, except you are going away from it and then toward it and then away from it and all the way around it and then away from it again and back toward it. that's what it's like walking out in the desert in the deep cliffs, in the dunes where you want to go there but there's not a route from here to there. if you had a gps it wouldn't really work because it would point a straight line from here to there because there's a cliff face and to get down you have to go down a series of ledges and to get up you have to go down a narrow canyon where there's a big boulder jammed into the bottom. every place has this backward trail, this labyrinth, leading you around. i was walking arpd this maze
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for about an hour before coming here and it does the same kind of thing where your mind settles, where you have to pay attention to where you are going. because if you look up for too long at all the passing architecture, you will forget where you are on the maze. you will end up in the wrong spot. you will end up going the wrong direction and you won't be able to find your way to the center. of course, out in the desert, you can't just walk off of the maze and out the front door and back into the street. out in the desert, you are there. the cliffs stand around you. the mazes are everywhere, passages opening up left and right. to write this book, house of rain, i walked a little bit over a thousand miles in legs from the four corners region
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from arizona, new mexico, colorado and california meet down to the chijuajua area of new mexico. there was one excavation along the way i remember out in the desert nears winslow, arizona. the desert out there is just a still life with a few landmarks on the horizon and this empty hole, the little colorado river desert, the painted desert, and we were working on a 500-room pueblo dating back to about 1400 ad. i just remember the wind just hailing down on us for days and you would be working down with trowels inside of a trench and if you stop for too long, the sand would start to fill up your hole again because it was blowing so much and everybody was turned away from